1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to the interactions between mobile handset and a server within a carrier network, and more specifically to the ability to create questionnaires from a mobile handset, store them in a network, disseminate them and collect results.
2. Related Art
Electronic devices, such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDA's), often contain small screens with very limited viewing area. They are constrained in terms of how much information can be displayed, and in terms of user interaction capabilities. The keyboards on cell phones, for example, are not conducive for user data entry by means of the small keyboard (with multiple letters assigned to each key), and only brief user inputs can be solicited from a user without annoying the user.
Often a user would want to ask his friend which movie, from a selection of movies currently playing, that they want to see. A user has to cumbersomely call up each of his friends and repeat the same questions, talk about movies currently showing, and ask them which one they would want to see in a group today. The whole process is time consuming, expensive, and requires all his friends to be available for the conversation to be satisfactorily completed. Thus, any attempt by a user to solicit information or feedback from his friends is likely to involve having to make several phone calls.
User interactions in real time, such as those provided for a user using a PC on the Internet, are often not possible for a user using a cell phone. For example, the amount of textual information cannot be a full page of textual information that is typically made available on a PC. Graphical information also cannot be large when presented on a cell phone as they typically are on a webpage accessed over a PC. A typical website provides a rich multi-media experience. The same website, when accessed from a cell phone, would be not only unreadable but also frustrating. Thus, there is a problem in presenting a user with information in order to solicit user input, when the user is using a cell phone rather than a PC.
Cell phones are therefore a device for which traditional websites on the Internet are ill prepared to provide information. In addition, surveys or questionnaires that are created for Internet based access via a PC are not appropriate for cell phone access. Asking one or more detailed questions with information on how to answer them is possible on a web page that is accessed from a PC. However, the same web page would be unmanageable and difficult to browse and navigate on a cell phone with a small LCD screen and small keyboard for user input.
Cell phone users often solicit information from other cell phone users by making phone calls. For example, quite often a user of a mobile device (such as a cell phone) would like to determine where his friends would like to have dinner from among all the nearby restaurants. The user may have to call each and every one of his interested friends to determine their preferences, in order to determine which restaurant would be the preferred one for the group as a whole. This would take at least as many calls as the number of interested friends, and would take the same amount of time for each such call, and incur significant costs to the user. There does not exist an easy way for a user to send a questionnaires from his mobile device for that purpose, in order to solicit feedback from his friends using the mobile device.
These and other limitations and deficiencies associated with the related art may be more fully appreciated by those skilled in the art after comparing such related art with various aspects of the present invention as set forth herein with reference to the figures.